Dollhouse--Expectations

[erastes]

Well, at the moment, I would rate this series as close to brilliant.

I read a little while ago on an agent’s blog (and buggered if I can remember which) about how it had taken 8 hours to capture peoples’ interest and how they compared that to pitching a book to an agent’publisher because you sure don’t get that leeway when doing that.

I’m going to ramble here probably.

First of all – I’m not from the MTV generation. I will give anything a “go” and I won’t be put off by a slow start, whether its a book or a tv series. I was baffled and foxed by Dollhouse, and I didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t crap. It was well written compared with some series I could mention!!  It was hugely creepy (as I’ve said before) and I know that some of my friends took that as being "woman exploitation=creepy” – but I couldn’t believe that of Josh Weedon. If he wanted to do femsploitation he would have had his wimmin in Firefly dressed in short skirts, tin foil and certainly not shooting from the hip.  He was up to something else.  Last week he proved that to me, as the series blew wide open and this week (which seems to be the week everyone else is talking about) was better still. Pathos city and a world of opportunity to kick arse.

But—comparing it to a book, I know that agents and publishers bang on about “WE MUST BE HOOKED IN THE FIRST PAGE” or whatever, and ok – that’s their gig, but I think to think that the rest of us work like that is to underestimate what goes on. Sheesh – if that was really the case, how many of us would have read past page one of any of Hardy’s novels, eh?  Hooked, no. I don’t have to be hooked. I just need a reason to carry on, and for me, the premise of Dollhouse, the wrongness of what is going on (even though it seems a lot of people took it as face value) was enough to hook me for seven hours before things REALLY started kicking off. (this is me recommending it btw, in case you didn’t notice. If you cast it aside in week one…. wrong!!!!)

What I also liked hugely was November being “normal” sized – a 12 or a 14 UK stylee, (although dressing her as a frump pissed me off) – I hope that was Josh reacting against the fans who complained when Tara DARED to put on a little weight. The fact that Victor has sticky out ears is just gorgeous. I wanna hug him.

On a related note – It seems to me that it’s about “expectation.” We are all too damned lazy to explore for ourselves, or to give something a change.   Vashtan spoke to me earlier about Standish and how he understood how some readers were a little upset about how the book developed.  Standish did start as an homage to the “classic” regency romance. Byronic brooding hero, blond fainting sickly overpowered other hero – but Vashtan says that to make them jump into bed after 3months timeline in the book was shocking the reader—I’d set a “contract” up and said “hey reader, this is ‘this’ type of book” – and then I’d gone and trampled all over that, had the men leap into bed with each other and completely broken the traces of what romance should be about.

Well, GOOD.

I don’t want anyone to start any of my books with expectations of how its going to be, or how its going to end.  I’m not writing for the reader (and that sounds horrid I know) – I’m writing for me and hoping to hell that the reader likes it. There is no contact.   If you want formula, if you want predictable, perhaps I’ll provide that, perhaps I won’t. At the moment, due to publishing constraints, most of my work has “romance” on it (and I’ve discussed how that label pisses me off ad infinitum) but one day, I hope I’ll be free of that, and you can take your chances.

Look at films. Over in the Uk at least, we don’t have expectations of how a film will end.  We might pigeonhole it into “romantic comedy” but that doesn’t insist it ends happily. And any genre of film, be it Sci-fi, Historical, Action, Horror, Mystery blah blah may ALSO include a romance (however it ends). Chris Smith said to me after reading one of the chapters of Mere Mortals “Are you going for Romance or Horror or Mystery?” and I said - “why not all of the above and perhaps more?”

I told you rambly, didn’t I?  Yes yes, I know you are all going to say “but book HAVE to have genres” – but I’m still going to say “why the hell do they?” because TV/film/play doesn’t. It constantly surprises me. Dollshouse surprises me and that’s why I love it. It’s mystery and spy and romance and hope and action and Xfiles and god knows what. To leave me wondering at the end of each episode can only be a good thing.  Because I come to it with no expectations.

Comments

[ariadneelda.livejournal.com]

I'm liking Dollhouse more and more every week! Then again, I liked it from the beginning but I think it really gets better and better.

Also, I didn't have any particular expectations with Standish, it was just "I want to see where the story will go" and I loved where it went.

I’m not writing for the reader (and that sounds horrid I know)

No, it doesn't! I actually think this is how it should be - writing to tell the story you want and not to try and please the reader. The story in the latter case won't have your heart poured in it, it'll be a compromise and will suffer for it. It may still be a good story but nothing exceptional or unique, IMHO.

[leni-jess.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this detailed appreciation of what Dollhouse is like. I've been interested in it from the first, but never seen an episode. (Whether it's been running here I don't know, I'm so used to not turning the TV on after its being busted for ~3 yrs.) I anticipate its being interesting, at minimum, because Joss has an excellent record, both as a maker and as a messenger, and his free-ranging imagination hasn't lapsed yet.

I'm glad to know that it's getting better and still holding you.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

“why the hell do they?”

Because bookselling is a business. Writing may be an art, but selling books is a business, and any one writer might be privileged enough to write to their own tastes and not worry about bringing in enough readers to support themselves, but most publishers don't have that luxury. They must - on average, over the sum of their catalog - turn a profit or cease to exist.

Catering to a reader's genre expectations lets them do that. You might prefer having 0 clue where the stories you read are going, and your reading satisfaction might depend on whether the writer manages to defy your expectations, but you're in the minority. And your primary source of story satisfaction isn't better or worse than that of genre fans, just different.

There's room for genre defying books but there's a bigger *paying* audience for books that work within the requirements of a genre while still offering surprises. Genre requirements don't have to mean predictability any more than the fact that a given sports game will end in win, lose, or draw. Within the rules of baseball or basketball there's room for an almost infinite combination of variations. In baseball, you try to hit the ball with your bat, and after 3 outs you switch sides. This predictable game manages to entrall millions of people. (I'm not one of them, and that's fine, it's not my genre.)

But the players don't suddenly break into an interpretive dance routine or send out twenty outfielders. That might be cool, but it's not baseball, and it's not what the tickets holders signed up for. That doesn't make them mindless, predictability worshiping sheep, it makes them a large, paying audience who - on this day, at this time - signed up for entertainment that follows a set of rules.

You and a few others might delight if all games could turn into wrestling with no warning, and you might even be able to create one interesting afternoon out of it, or a niche industry of mixed martial ball sports. But you're not going to get the money of the huge expectations-having baseball audience, at least not with the consistency that supports the building of large stadiums, and you've got almost no chance of turning a reliable profit. And that doesn't mean your preferences, or your ballesketball is bad or less than boring old predictable baseball that allows for variation within a set of rules.

But it also doesn't mean that the romance (or other) genre audience - who sometimes want to go into their reading experience knowing that a certain set of expectations will be satisfied - is somehow less evolved, or any less fond of surprises. Why can't it be Romance, horror, and Mystery? Of course it can be all three.

But if your publisher has any real hope of selling a significant quantity of the book, their best chance lies in finding at least one of those genres for which your book manages to satisfy the core expectations, and marketing it as that, plus all these other elements.

No one's saying your book with romantic elements has have to have a happy ending, or that it's less than for not meeting that genre's core expectations. But if it doesn't, it doesn't deserve the established publishing label of Romance, and it isn't owed a crack at the enormous purchasing power of the specific genre Romance buying public - at least not under the fraudulent guise of Romance. And that's okay. It still might be a really awesome book that will do well.

But if the publisher sets up expectations with a certain label, then fucks with it too many time, they're going to lose their audience - even an audience who on another day, or with a more honest label might like your mixed martial ballesketball with a more honest label.

But getting pissed off at the guys who get to use the label baseball for the game that involves the four bases and the counterclockwise running and the lack of singing and dancing - and who therefore, in this context get to reap the rewards of setting up and fulfilling expectations seems silly to me, as does asking "Why *cant* there be dancing and guns?" Because that's not baseball, that's why. And fans of the sport-like genre readers-prefer, for the duration of a game, to enjoy the variations within the framework, not chucking the rules out all together every time.

[the-sea-to.livejournal.com]

I actually find it very amusing that I asked you that, and then ended up with DRM. Yes, because I AM SO GENRE CENTRIC THERE! (not!) I completely agree, genres are there to be broken, DRM started out as Historical romance, and though it kept SOME of the romance, by the end it was about history and plot and suchlike. Now to event he book out - like a pair of scales!

Also -- because I was going to be good, but you know what, fuck it -- for the naysayers about non-genre fiction, you may want to ask Erastes just how well Standish is doing before you start saying it does not sell. Heck, the fact it is m/m is BAD ENOUGH OMG TEH EVIL (you know what I mean E), let alone IT DOES NOT COMPLETELY FIT THE TROPES OF THE GENRE!!!! So how come it is pretty much an insta-classic must-read? Maybe because it is not formulaic? Just a thought.

(Now I pootle off to swim and work and leave E to deal with any irateness that this comment spawns. Love you dear!)

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

Dollhouse is just marvellous at this point -- I, too, was a bit worried at the beginning when my friendslist exploded with fury at Joss exploiting women, but I was pretty sure he was going to turn it upside down, and lo and behold, he did! But I also don't need to be hooked on the first page. I don't think you can read nineteenth-century novels and have that mindset.

[essayel.livejournal.com]

I'm going to worry about what genre I've written when I finally finish something - like the one about the 1970s cryptographer and his gardener communicating with flower arrangements, or the Scythian warlord and the Theban sculptor, or the 15th century actor acting as a 'messenger' for a Florence banking house. None of them fit in anywhere, I'm just having loads of fun writing the stories and if nobody wants to read them - well fair enough, they can go on Skyehawke or something.

I've never developed ambition, just a burning need to tell stories.

[hybridartifacts.livejournal.com]

Im inclined to agree on this, though I must confess I only watched part of one episode of Dollhouse. I am trying to be picky with the TV I watch these days, and tend to find I wait and see how things go, then come back and check a series out later again if it got an interesting response when its on DVD.

With films I get rather tired of getting to that point with Hollywood films where it could end either way (the predictable ending or something interesting) and it's nearly always the predictable one. Most Hollywood movies can be summed up by the realisation that they were probably pitched on the back of a paper napkin in a bar...

I also get very frustrated with genre boundaries. I love it when things cross them, but they so rarely do. When I can get copies I always enjoy reading books by Tim Powers, and its partly because he deliberately sets out to blur and distort those boundaries. In the end we tend to get product pushed at us by companies whose first thought is profit though. I understand why, but it's terribly boring at times.